Observers' Calendars for Kitt Peak

The astronomical calendars presented here were generated using a program
called skycalendar
written by John Thorstensen of Dartmouth College. The program, which can
generate a calendar for any site, is available
by anonymous FTP from
iraf.noao.edu in the contrib directory --
see the skycal.readme
file in that directory for more details.

The times of sunset, the end and beginning of astronomical twilight, and
sunrise are given in MST. The rising and setting times take into account
atmospheric refraction, the mean semidiameter of the Sun, and are
corrected approximately for the elevation of Kitt Peak above the terrain
which forms its horizon, assumed to be 900 m. The latter correction is
approximate; it was determined empirically and amounts to about 5 minutes.
If the moon rises or sets during the night, the rising or setting time is
printed; around new moon, the tabulated rising occurs after the tabulated
setting, even though the rising time is always printed first. The zenith
distance used for moonrise and moonset is the same for sunrise and sunset.
The last two columns give the topocentric celestial coordinates for
midnight MST.

Since these tabular data have a wide page format they may be easier to view on
a full-screen-wide viewer page.

Brian Casey maintains a Web page of Astronomy Tools
that includes an interactive version of skycalendar and an
associated program called skycalc, part of the same package
from John Thorstensen. Skycalc allows one to compute many different bits of
astronomical information.

NOAO-Tucson users will note that both skycalendar and skycalc are
available on our main Sun servers. Simply type the program name
to run it.
Please refer to the Skycalc User's Manual.